Gypsy Jan
Ultra Nomad
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Mood: Depends on which way the wind is blowing
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How Not to Get Beheaded in Mexico
From the Huffington Post
By Douglas Anthony Cooper
" I can't even remember when I last experienced the beheading of a close friend. Everyone assumes it must be a weekly, or even a daily event: after
all, I live in Mexico. The truth, however, is that you are as likely to have your head removed against your will in my town -- Oaxaca -- as you are to
be murdered by roving, machete-crazed gangs in Martha's Vineyard.
You protest: slavering butchers are thin on the ground in Martha's Vineyard. Ah, but we do not have beheadings in Oaxaca. To be honest, they're
unconscionably lax about slaughtering tourists in this city. It just doesn't happen. There are whole great swaths of Mexico -- some 95% of the country
-- that are untouched by the drug war. In these places, tourists are annoyingly safe.
Take out a map. Mexico is rather large. To avoid all of Mexico because you fear drug violence, is like cancelling your trip to the Napa Valley because
you hear that people are flying airplanes into towers in New York City. (I'm sure a lot of Europeans did just that.)
The homicide rate in most Mexican cities is simply not very exciting. People who read newspapers -- they are legion -- will tell you that Mexico City
is Elm Street on steroids. No way they're taking their family anywhere near the Mexican capital. Yet these same people do not think twice about
hauling their beloved brood to Disney World.
Disney World is in Orlando. Orlando, Florida.
What, you're not trembling? The rate of violent crime in Orlando is really something. At the theme park itself you might not encounter drooling gangs
with machetes, but the likelihood of getting slaughtered is much higher in the city of Orlando than it is in Mexico City. The homicide rate in Mexico
City is sub-terrifying: 8.3 out of 100,000. The rate in Orlando? Honey, you don't want to know.
If you're truly bent on living dangerously, hit the French Quarter for a shot of faux absinthe. New Orleans is leveling humans at a rate of 58 per
100,000. To be fair, that's an improvement upon the homicide record set in 1994: an awe-inspiring 85.8. No doubt champagne is flowing at the tourist
board.
Don't get me wrong: I worship New Orleans. It's a lot safer than it used to be, and I would not hesitate to visit. Still, Mayor Mitch Landrieu
admitted -- when discussing a local high school -- that for part of last year, "a student attending John McDonogh was more likely to be killed than a
soldier in Afghanistan."
Funny that people are not dissuaded from visiting New Orleans -- or Disney World -- by travel advisories that read like torture porn.
Oh, you do want to know that Orlando statistic? That would be 11.7 (28 homicides, in a population of 238,300). Which is better than New Orleans or
Baghdad, but way higher than Mexico City. Ironically, Orlando receives the same kind of hyperventilating press in the UK that Mexico suffers in Canada
and the US: to Brits, Orlando is The Mouse That Roared, Then Indiscriminately Dismembered.
The internet too offers exquisite advice regarding Orlando. Somehow, I suspect this is hyperbole: "Don't be surprised if your sleeping child has been
taken right out of their hotel bed in the wee hours of the morning." I mean, come on. You have my permission to be surprised.
In fact, the capital of America is a much more dangerous place than the capital of Mexico: You are 10 times more likely to get beheaded on a school
trip to the Lincoln Memorial than you are strolling through downtown Mexico City.
Okay, I'm lying. You are ten times more likely to be murdered in a drug-related crime. (The rate of actual beheadings is suppressed by travel agents
on both sides of the border.)
People ask me, regularly, how they can travel safely to Mexico. Here I have impeccable advice: follow this, and you're pretty much guaranteed to keep
your head. Taking notes? Good.
Do not, under any circumstances, take a job with a major drug cartel. Just say no. You do not want to be a hit man, or a mule, or even middle
management -- that's how people get killed.
I mean it: that is how people get killed. Sunbathing, on the other hand, is oddly uneventful. Yes, there are a few places in Mexico that I would
avoid, unless I were applying for that gig (which I urge you to reconsider). Most border towns are not the destination of choice, except I suppose
when brothel-hopping, in which case I'm told a soupçon of danger is bracing (and well-deserved). Acapulco too has declined. It was once a town in
which you had a good chance of having a bad time. It is now a town in which you have no chance of having a good time.
And Mexico City, while not particularly murderous, is somewhere to be very careful: petty crime is rife, and not-so-petty crime (kidnapping) is a real
issue. I travel through Mexico City all the time, and even chose to live there fairly recently, but I take the usual precautions -- I restrict myself
to taxis from official taxi stands; I don't use bank machines on the street; and I suppress the urge to wave my arms around and yell, "Rob the
Canadian!" (If you would like to give it a shot, that would be: "¡Saqueen al canadiense!")
Lots of really nice cities are getting a bit hairy: Guadalajara, for instance. The San Francisco Chronicle has a useful list of places to avoid --
mostly areas on the American border, and south along the Pacific Coast to the state of Guerrero. The Washington Post has another useful list: they add
to this the entire state of Veracruz (which is very sad -- it's lovely). These two guides will steer you clear of all the places you have been reading
about, including the very few resort towns that have become dangerous: Mazatlán, for instance, and Acapulco.
Again, however, this is a tiny part of Mexico. "Of 2,500 municipalities (what we call counties), only 80, or fewer than five per cent, have been
affected by the drug war."
Graphic anecdotes are hard to ignore, by design, but they are useless when trying to grasp the nature of a country that is not simply vast, but
immeasurably diverse. You know how Los Angeles doesn't have a whole lot in common with an Amish community in Pennsylvania? Well, multiply that
difference a thousand-fold when comparing Ciudad Juarez (a genuinely dangerous place) to a Maya village in the state of Yucatán.
In fact, you are quite a bit safer in this state -- which includes the ruins of Chichen Itza and Uxmal -- than you are in Canada. The national
homicide rate in Canada is 1.85 victims per 100,000. Sorry, kids, but that's a war zone relative to Yucatán: the second most dangerous city in Canada?
"Butchart Gardens" must be Canadian slang for "the place where people get butchered."
So our family turns elsewhere. Hmm. Probably best to avoid "Edmonton's Murder Belt." Aiee. We'll go east. Regina? Are you out of your mind?
"Saskatchewan reported the highest Crime Severity Index, followed by Manitoba." How about the East Coast? Not if our worried Mexican family cares
about that crime severity thing: "St. John's had the largest increase." This is awful.
At last, after carefully considering Prince Edward Island, our sensible family decides it is just not worth the risk. (After all, homicide in PEI has
skyrocketed.) You would have to be a fool to leave Mexico.
All right, all right. The beyond-exponential increase in homicide associated with Prince Edward Island -- when looked at closely -- is not really that
alarming. One whole person was killed in 2011. As opposed to zero, in the five preceding years. Prince Edward Island is hilariously safe. The Mexican
government has been decent enough to refrain from issuing travel advisories, despite the crime rates in Abbotsford and Thunder Bay. Level heads have
prevailed."
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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Mengano
Banned
Posts: 1238
Registered: 9-26-2011
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Gypsy Jan
In fact, you are quite a bit safer in this state -- which includes the ruins of Chichen Itza and Uxmal -- than you are in Canada. The national
homicide rate in Canada is 1.85 victims per 100,000. Sorry, kids, but that's a war zone relative to Yucatán |
It never ceases to amaze me how these writers can write total fabrications and get away with it. I guess nobody ever checks the numbers.
The real numbers reported by the Mexican government are a lot different:
Homicides in Yucatan 2011 - 166
Population of Yucatan 2010 - 970,377
Homicide rate in Yucatan per 100,000 - 17.1
Homicide rate in 2011 in Canada per 100,000 - 1.6
The Yucatan has over 10 times the murder rate as Canada. These BS writers depend upon people not actually checking their numbers..
http://www.secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/work/models/Secretar...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/10/26/homicides-sta...
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Woooosh
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Registered: 1-28-2007
Location: Rosarito Beach
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Mood: Luminescent Waves at Rosarito Beach
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Not long ago my 26 year old cousin was beheaded and his head and left arm put on top of his truck. He would not pay extortion for the family
restaurant. They pulled him away from the restaurant at gunpoint while it was open, they didn't bother to cover their faces. His father begged for
the gunmen to take him instead. They killed him right away. The men kept calling for money so everyone is now in TJ. There is no one to find the
killers. There is no one to help the family be safe. The feeling of hopelessness in your life and for the future of your family is what you don't
feel until it happens to your family. When this happens you understand how little comfort you get from statistics.
[Edited on 1-31-2012 by Woooosh]
\"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing\"
1961- JFK to Canadian parliament (Edmund Burke)
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Mengano
Banned
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Registered: 9-26-2011
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Jeese, woooosh, you just gave me a great idea for a marketing plan for Mexico:
Visit Mexico! We're all dead in the long run anyway.
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Bajafun777
Super Nomad
Posts: 1103
Registered: 9-13-2006
Location: Rosarito & California
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Mood: Enjoying Life with Wife In Mexico, Easy on The Easy
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Woooosh, first off I am sorry for your loss and for someone who lost a niece to a very vicious murder created nothing but a feeling of numbness or as
you say hopelessness comes into play. You just want to rip the murders apart or hunt them down with the immediate response of take no prisoners.
Again, I am sorry for you loss, as I am for the thousands in the USA and Mexico that have loss loved ones to terrible criminals with nothing but
contempt for our lawful society. Hoping all nomads remain safe and healthy in their Mexico travels. Take Care & Travel Safe----"No Hurry, No
Worry, Just FUN" bajafun777
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paranewbi
Senior Nomad
Posts: 913
Registered: 4-15-2011
Location: San diego
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My precious Son in Law would work 16 hour days so my daughter could be a stay home mom. He would read the Bible to my 4 grandkids every night after
doing that. Then he would lie next to my Daughter and read the same book to her in their bed.
On his way to work at 2am, he was hit head on while riding his money saving motorcycle to his job. The drunk young stripper, returning from work was
on the wrong side of a concrete barrier. She walked away and was found 3 hours later sitting on a rock, still drunk. She told the officer that she
thought she hit a dog.
Sorry for your loss Woooosh.
It can happen anywhere, anytime.
Make sure the last thing you ever say to anyone is with love.
It may be the last thing you ever say to anyone.
I told my Son in Law that I loved him when I left daughters family after spending the day with them on the beach in Oceanside.
I never saw him again.
Thank you Jesus.
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